Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
Today's
Stories
July
20, 2004
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of
Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition
to Iraq War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything
Wrong with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert

July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...

July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire

July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert

July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link

July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter

July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof





Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.

|
July
19, 2004
"Everyone
Knows This is Theater"
Burying
Iraq, Burying Bush (Part One)
By
JOHN ROSS
MEXICO CITY
Iraq is a nation of buried souls. The
voices of the millenniums murmur to us from Babylon and Ur and
Mosu,l the buried songs of warriors and poets, invading armies
buried beneath the sands, the headstones of British generals
crumbling in a Kut boneyard, dissidents and communists dumped
into far-flung common graves, the Shia dead spread in neat squares
for miles around the tomb of Ali in Najef, the venomous dust
of Halabja, Saddam himself buried alive in his spider hole, the
exact size of a pauper's grave.
And now here at the end, when
the jig is just about up for them, the grand plan of Bush and
his handlers has been reduced to burying an already buried nation,
burying Iraq, burying the dead, burying the lies, the mistakes
and miscalculations, burying the memory of the catastrophic mess
they have made of this place in 16 horrifying months of occupation.
With the November elections breathing down Bush's neck, there
is not a second to spare to wash the blood from the President's
hands, to blot out all the torture photos, the ghost detainees,
the 40 Iraqi prisoners battered to death by psychopathic contract
killers, the dissing of the Geneva Conventions, that hooded man
balanced precariously atop a cardboard box with electric cables
snaking from his genitals to whom Bush is now irrevocably mated
in the eyes of the whole wide world.
We have got to put all this
behind us pronto the handlers insist, hand over sovereignty to
the usual CIA stooge, declare victory like we did in Vietnam,
and get the fuck out of Dodge before the sky comes down.
Bush is trying, trying to bury
Iraq under the rubble of "reconstruction", under buckets
of fresh paint and blood, of suitcases stuffed with greenback
dollar bills, the recovery of "sovereignty", but the
embarrassing details keep popping up like unquiet ghosts--the
aluminum tubes, the Niger uranium, the Prague meeting, the phony
ties to Al Qaeda, the missing WMDs, the lies, oh the lies.
"This is an avaricious,
premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate
threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage."
So concludes "Anonymous", the still-active CIA honcho
who was charged with watching Saddam during the second Clinton
administration, in "Imperial Hubris", a volume that
out Michael Moores Michael Moore in its condemnation of Bush's
Iraqi adventure and bridles with the rancor of the indomitable
General Smedley Butler at the U.S. imperial aggressions in which
both public servants were complicit.
How many has Bush buried on
both sides so far? On June 4th, the day I returned to North
American soil after months on the road in Mexico, Guatemala,
Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador to tour California with my latest
instant cult classic "Murdered By Capitalism", the
scoreboard listed 839 American military dead in Iraq. The day
I escaped the U.S. one month later, the count was at 880 and
rising, and total coalition deaths were a day away from topping
one thousand.
Iraqi deaths during this same
period, calculated from hospital and Red Cross sources. were
681, a ten to one kill rate, better than the 13 to 1 last summer
when the occupation was new. Nonetheless, grave digging and
corpse washing remain growth industries in Bush's Iraq.
In the first 15 days of June
as I watched Baghdad from inside the belly of the beast, there
was at least one car bombing every 24 hours. On June 17th, 41
job seekers were mowed down while waiting on a recruitment line
outside a Baghdad police barracks. On June 23rd, a hundred were
blown apart in impeccably coordinated bombings in three Sunni
triangle cities. The body parts of feckless young marines continued
to litter the freeways of central Iraq.
Above all of this homicidal
chaos, the shadow of Abu Ghraib has draped itself like a suffocating
black burka, this global symbol of Yanqui bestiality whose prurient
images of sexual torture, drooling dogs, military S & M and
CIA B & D, naked men on leashes, naked men forced to masturbate
at gunpoint, naked men simulating sodomy, have left Iraqis aghast.
One pulse-taking ordered by
the occupation authorities and whose findings were suppressed,
revealed that an overwhelming percentage of Iraqis surveyed did
not distinguish between the torturers of Abu Ghraib and the American
troops who had come to ostensibly "liberate" them.
The lurid revelations beamed round the world shredded the last
threads of Washington's credibility. Abu Ghraib is the answer
to the question Bush so plaintively asked after 9/11: why does
the whole world hate us?
By the third week in June,
temperatures were soaring towards 120 degrees and the electricity
grid which feeds Baghdad was mostly not functioning (before the
war, when I was there as a Human Shield it worked fine.) Sewage
gushed into the bombed-out streets up in Sadr City where the
snipers fired from the rooftops at desultory Marine patrols.
Foreigners were being cautioned not to drive out of the city
because the insurgency owned stretches of highway. Terrorist
bombings had taken out key pipelines in Kirkruk and near Basra,
paralyzing energy production.
Downtown there were running
gun battles around the hotels and the threat of kidnapping kept
the contractor mercenaries confined to sweltering rooms, swilling
beer, and cursing the TV (if the house generator was working)
where the lead news item was usually about the beheadings that
have become a ritual in this ignoble war.
The first, of course, had been
Nick Berg's (if it was actually his head and not just a paste-up)
severed under a sword allegedly wielded by the new U.S. boogieman
Musab al-Zarqawi in a metaphorical decapitation of the West for
Al-Jazeera's ever-present cameras. Then it was the South Korean
interpreter-turned-evangelist's turn, a U.S. Marine was next.
In Saudi Arabia too the heads were rolling--a New Jersey Apache
helicopter repairman lost his. Over in Afghanistan, U.S. proxy
troops reportedly decapitated four Taliban suspects. I tell
you, it was better than a front seat at the French Revolution.
This was indeed the Iraq that
proconsul L. Paul Bremer III handed over to the usual CIA stooge,
Iyad Allawi (who is said to actually believe he is the prime
minister), before dawn in a hush-hush June 28th backroom ceremony
buried from public view 48 hours before the June 30th due date.
Before fleeing this distraught
country, Bremer III signed dozens of decrees institutionalizing
the free market "reforms" he had previously imposed
upon the Iraqi economy, among them tax-free profit-taking for
all transnational corporations doing business in Iraq. "The
day before I took this job I was a businessman. What did I know?"
the Kissinger protégé confessed to the NY Times
John Burns, he just wanted to get Bush the biggest bang for his
buck. Sure I made mistakes and maybe post-war planning wasn't
up to snuff "but we did the right thing"--and then
Bremer was whisked off by the ever-present Blackhawk because
surface transportation to the airport is subject to rebel bombings,
on his way back home to Vermont to write the book which was probably
part of the deal from the get-go.
In a certain symmetry of literary
fate, Saddam Hussein's soft porn novel "Zalyba and the King"
was a best-seller in Baghdad by the end of June. And my own book
"Murdered By Capitalism" was outselling Bill Clinton's
"Life" ten to one in an informal polling of progressive
northern California bookstores.
Turning over the keys to the
kingdom June 30th obeyed no Iraqi ultimatum. It was always a
date White House strategists had set as the outer limits of Bush's
hands-on involvement in the on-going massacre, the last day he
could put some distance between himself and the corpse heap at
his feet before convention frenzy set in. Setting this date
was yet one more big mistake because it gave the resistance a
target towards which to escalate its attack and wholesale bloodshed
was not averted by the closeted handover.
In the end, the transfer of
authority was a brief ceremonial event, an early morning photo
op, as has been every milestone in this homicidal odyssey from
invasion and occupation to "Mission Accomplished" and
the plastic Thanksgiving turkey, all carefully plotted out to
get Bush to November with victory in his pocket and the war behind
him. But it has never worked very well--at each step, the resistance
has responded with apocalyptic violence that measures and mirrors
the great hate for the American Satan Bush has incited in the
Islamic world.
Bremer's successor is no stranger
to those who watch the spooks. John Dmitiri Negroponte presided
over the secret 1971 Cambodian incursion from the embassy in
Saigon, moved on to Honduras where he ran the Contra operation
out of Tegoo openly consorting with the assassins of Monsignor
Romero. The next stop was Mexico where he sold NAFTA to an only-too-willing
Carlos Salinas. As Bush's ambassador to the United Nations,
he bugged and blackmailed Security Council members to give his
boss a free hand to squash Saddam and when that failed, the U.S.
tried to squash the UN.
Now installed in a monumental
Green Zone palace with a staff of thousands, Negroponte will
have the same carte blanche powers as the previous proconsul
but, as an ambassador, he will have to be more diplomatic about
it. One difference between Bremer and Negroponte: the former
head of the former CPA took his first phone call each morning
from Condoleezza Rice--his replacement will hear from Colin Powell.
Never before in North American history have two persons of color
been more empowered to reign down maximum mayhem upon the colored
peoples of the planet Earth.
Now the trappings of sovereignty
have been turned over to a thuggish oligarchy that may or may
not do their bosses' bidding. As is de rigor, Allawi and his
mob were promptly eulogized by their puppet masters as champions
of freedom and democracy. Permit a Vietnam vet his flashback
(even if I chose to go to prison instead of the war) but Allawi's
investiture did not seem much distinct from the horse manure
McNamara and Rusk used to pile on to each new cowboy colonel
who seized power in Saigon.
These freedom-loving democrats
have assigned themselves the power to inflict martial law upon
the public, curtail civil liberties, declare curfews, invade
private homes, and ban political parties and demonstrations.
Hail Fredonia! The new Minister of Justice & Human Rights
(sic) has advertised his intention to impose the death penalty
upon evildoers. Allawi himself has been accused of personally
executing six suspected insurgents during a Baghdad police interrogation
and has otherwise been positively Saddam-like in his bloodthirsty
jeremiads, threatening to behead the beheaders. Yet on the other
hand, he has offered amnesty to those who fought against the
Yanqui occupation, a position that must preoccupy the occupiers
about just what they are occupying Iraq for.
Evidence of the re-Saddamification-of-Iraq-without-Saddam
is plentiful. Fallujah, where the dismemberment and burning
of four U.S. mercenaries became emblematic of the Muslim world's
fury at the American invaders, power was turned back to a former
ranking Saddamite general, and Ramadi and Bacuba are also said
to be administered by officials of the deposed dictatorship.
Stuck without a dependable security force, Marine trainers are
reassembling Hussein's old army and interim p.m. Allawi has raised
Saddam's old General Direction of Security from the dead to spy
upon the Iraqi people.
Meanwhile, in the holy cities
of the south Sheik Sadr's Mehdi army has forced the Marines to
withdraw after the leathernecks stupidly shelled the mosque of
Ali, the Shia Vatican in Najef, risking further dismemberments
by irate locals.
But with Iraqi security forces
deserting in Guinness record book numbers, the puppet regime
will invariably be forced to call on the U.S. Marine Corps to
restore law and order, an arrangement that is going to considerably
up the traffic at the Army's Dover Delaware mortuary reception
center - from which the U.S. Senate just voted to bar the paparazzi
from snapping photos of the incoming flag-draped coffins.
What was our sacrifice for,
the grieving families of 800 or 900 or 1000 dead G.I.'s must
be asking? What for, the 5400 listed wounded want to know, the
legions of the legless and those with half their faces blown
off and a hook for a hand? What was this all for?
At least 30 occupation troops
took the opportunity of their stay in Iraq to commit suicide
and thousands more were "medically evacuated." One
out of every six returning vets suffers from discernable post
traumatic stress syndrome the New England Journal of Medicine
just reported. It is only a matter of months before urban streets
will be crowded with bugged-out, homeless Iraqi vets, time bombs
exploding before our very eyes, bringing Bush's war back home.
Already, the hawks are warning
against an "Iraqi syndrome", a state of mind that would
make future "preventative" wars unpopular much as the
"Vietnam syndrome" has stayed the hand of every president
up to Bush to wage protracted ground war in the third world.
Hours after the Yanqui occupation
officially ended, Saddam Hussein was escorted by U.S. Puerto
Rican troops (assigned so the wily former dictator would not
know what they said among themselves) into a makeshift courtroom
at the euphemistically named Camp Victory adjacent to the former
Saddam Hussein International Airport, and turned over to the
puppet rulers of Iraq. In a badly fitting, cheap American suit,
he looked disheveled and diminished, thought a blow-dried John
Burns, one of the few reporters admitted to the court session.
In the photos, Saddam's eyes ooze mistrust.
"I am the president of
Iraq--who are you?" he growled at the young judge, "are
you an Iraqi?" Then, in a throwaway line that has had deep
scratch in the Arab street, Saddam explained the what for. "Everyone
knows this is just a theater to get Bush re-elected."
Such repartee was only audible
in the courtroom. Reporters like the London Independent's intrepid
Robert Fisk had to watch it on the big screen with no audibles--the
only subtitles at the bottom of the screen read "authorized
by the U.S. military," Fisk noted. At the same hour Saddam
stood in the dock, three more Marines were blown to smithereens
just down the road out by the airport. What for?
These days when Bush is bunkered
down in the Oval Office, he is often seen fondling the unloaded
pistol the Delta Force snatched from Saddam's lap that glorious
December day they fetched him from the spider hole. Visitors
report that he sometimes brandishes the gun as if it were a sort
of tribal trophy. "It is the phallic equivalent of a scalp"
surmises City College of New York psychotherapy professor Stanley
Rashan who told the Times he suspected Bush was so keen on the
pistol because it represented a sort of emasculation of Saddam,
revenge for purportedly masterminding the unsuccessful 1993 Kuwait
City car bombing of his father--remember "he tried to kill
my daddy"?
So that's it, that's the what
for, and it is positively Grecian. Bush seeks to bury Iraq to
win his father's approbation--didn't we suspect this all along?
The real tragedy in this Oedipal
farce has been that tens of thousands of us and them had to die
to work out the Bush family's personal trauma.
PART TWO of "Burying Iraq,
Burying Bush" by John Ross will run tomorrow.
John Ross will be on the spot in Mexico City
for much of July and August before sallying forth to do maximum
mischief at the Republican National Convention in Manhattan from
where he will launch the intergalactic tour of his latest instant
cult classic "Murdered
By Capitalism--A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the
U.S. Left".
Weekend
Edition Features for July 10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|